This blog is dedicated to the many many Europeans who, despite continuous disinformation campaigns, do not believe the worst of the Jews (malign and secret Jewish power); who do not disguise anti-Semitism behind the language of anti-Zionism; and who know that Israel embodies the best in democracy.

Monday, 31 October 2011

A reader (RR) sent this: "In fact, the yellow star used by the Nazis as a badge of shame against the Jews was first introduced by a caliph in Baghdad in the 9th century, and spread to the West in medieval times." (Bernard Lewis - The Jews of Islam - Princeton University Press, 1987, pp. 25-26)

Source: Islam in Europe - Via Tages-Anzeiger (German):Several hundred Muslims gathered from across Switzerland Saturday for a protest against Islamophobia. The 'Day against Islamophobia and racism' was organized by the Islamic Central Council of Switzerland (ICCS).

Saturday, 29 October 2011

When will Europe change and finally get rid of this type of politician and opt for a younger generation of less Israel-hating leaders? There are around 1500 Jews living in Finland today.

HELSINKI (AFP)---Israel's occupation of the Palestinian territories is tantamount to apartheid, Finnish Foreign Minister Erkki Tuomioja [this guy is 65] said Wednesday, warning time was running out for a two-state solution.

"If you are occupying areas inhabited by... Palestinians who do not have the same rights as the Israelis in Israel, that is apartheid and that is not sustainable," he told reporters.

"I think that the majority in Israel has also realized this but they have been unable to provide a leadership that (can) move forward on the two-state solution," he added.

Tuomioja also warned that time was "running out for the two-state solution."

"There is growing frustration among the Palestinians that a two-state solution is not going to come," he said, adding: "the outlook is not very positive."

Tuesday, 25 October 2011

As usual in France, when Jews and their allies protest against incitement to hatred, they are accused -- first, of censoring the media, and second, of bad faith, clannishness, thin skin, emotional overreaction, dual loyalty, refusal to face the truth of their (i.e., Israel's) pernicious deeds...and finally, they are dumped into a Protocols of the Elders of Zion cesspool.

Eleven years after the al Dura hoax -- produced and broadcast by state-owned France 2 TV -- the same outfit treats us to a ludicrously staged Palestinian State promotional film. Was the 2½ -hour "documentary" aired on October 3 in the geopolitical magazine Un œil sur la planète (an eye on the world), a chef d'oeuvre in the campaign to destroy the Jewish State or a last gasp of shopworn Palestinianism1?

Looking at the world through keffieh-colored glasses, MC Etienne Leenhardt disingenuously asks: "Is the creation of a Palestinian state still possible?" First stop, Ramallah. Chic, modern, bustling with business and a humming bureaucracy that maintains law and order...everything you need to make a state. How did Ramallah get so shiny and peaceful? What keeps it from tumbling into the maw of the Islamists who rule Gaza? Who is financing its prosperity, and what does the "wall" have to do with it? Don't ask. Leenhardt and cohorts know why the Palestinians don't have the state they've been yearning for since the days of Adam and Eve: it's because the cruel, heartless, murderous, land-grabbing, gun-slinging Israelis colonize their land!

One brief scene sums it up. A Palestinian in the West Bank (Judea-Samaria) points to a clump of trees in the near distance and laments: "You see that fertile land over there? That's what the colonists [Israelis] took for themselves. They left us this arid stuff."

The indictment builds and incriminates. The Israelis/Jews stole the land, siphon off the water, erect a wall between a man and his fields, expropriate the very holiness, and, one could assume, took all the fertile intelligence for themselves, colonizing the Nobel prizes and leaving the Palestinians with nothing but bile.

Actually, this docu-hoax could be used to help the Zionist cause. It is so grotesque, so crudely fabricated, so false and so dishonest that it sheds light on the subtle twists of more sophisticated products that weave their way through public discourse, gradually bending minds and condoning atrocities. We who have been working tirelessly to expose the Mohamed al Dura hoax can take some comfort in observing that this long-drawn out genocidal hate speech exercise doesn't seem to have the electrifying effect of the September 2000 blood libel. Unfortunately, this does not rule out a potential increase in thuggery against French Jews.

Saturday, 22 October 2011

It is not only in Palestine that children used as tools to demonize Israel. In Belgium too. A bunch of boycotters (mainly female) went to the Food Fair held in Brussels with a small boy who was made to hand out leaflets calling for the boycott of Israel. To illustrate their hatred, the militants played a song by French singer Abdel Azizi : "Zionism is the gangrene all the way from Tel Aviv to Paris". It is not the first time that small children are used in this way - and obviously nobody cares. Not even those entrusted with the welfare of children.

Friday, 21 October 2011

"As far as I know there are millions of people who are not Jewish in Israel today."PARIS (EJP) ---"A Jewish state I don’t know what that means,” said French President Nicolas Sarkozy, in response to a question about Israel’s demand that the Palestinian recognize Israel as a Jewish state.

He added: "Speaking of a state of the Jewish people is already more interesting."

The French leader made the statement in an interview he gave Tuesday to Agence France Presse and two Jewish radios Radio J and RCJ on the occasion of the release of Gilad Shalit.

"As you know I defended the idea of ​​two nation states," said Sarkozy.

"A Jewish state has no meaning because a state is neither Jewish nor Catholic," he said. "A state of the Jewish people is a discussion we can have, but a Jewish state itself does not make much sense," he added.

"Two states for two peoples would mean that nobody is losing face."

"If there is a Palestinian state, it is likely that Palestinians will be mainly living there and if there is an Israeli state Jews around the world know that whatever happens they will have a homeland."

"As far as I know there are millions of people who are not Jewish in Israel today."

Asked his reaction to the fact that on blogs his name is often associated with the Jews [below], Sarkozy responded: "Frankly, I prefer to be on the side of those who are victims of anti-Semitic abuse than with those who profess these kind of behaviors. I consider myself as a French of multiple origins," he added.

Wednesday, 19 October 2011

Analysis: What mechanisms are causing some German educators, students, EVZ foundation employees to turn Israel into whipping boy for Europe’s guilt?

BERLIN – The Jerusalem Post exposé on the German Holocaust foundation Remembrance, Responsibility, Future (EVZ) in late September and October revealed that two of its Holocaust high school student programs were being fueled by hatred of the Jewish state.

What social and psychological mechanisms are causing some German educators, students and EVZ foundation employees to marginalize the Holocaust and turn the State of Israel into a public whipping boy for Europe’s guilt about the crimes of the Shoah?

In a series of interviews with leading Israeli and Dutch specialists last week and on Sunday, the Post examined the need of many Europeans to expunge feelings of culpability about the memory of their ancestors’ complicity in the Holocaust.

The EVZ used 38,690 euros ($53,687) to finance studentexchange programs in 2010- 2011, in which Israel was equated with the former repressive Stalinist East German state, and students published crude cartoons of Jews in a brochure. German taxpayer monies funded the speaking engagement of a hardcore anti-Israel Holocaust survivor, Hajo Meyer, at the Anne Frank high school in Gütersloh.

During Meyer’s talk with the students, he termed Israel a “criminal state” and equated the suffering of Palestinians to the persecution and mass murder of Jews during the Holocaust.

Dr. Manfred Gerstenfeld, the chairman of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs who authored a book on the abuse of the memory of the Holocaust, said that “comparing Palestinians with Shoah victims is part of the much broader distortion category of Holocaust inversion. These inverters portray Jews as Nazis. The few such Jewish ideological perverts get publicity because many more non-Jews want to hear these things from Jews.”

Gerstenfeld, who was raised in Holland and is an expert on modern European anti-Semitism, cited the writer Leon de Winter’s views about the “falsifiers of history” who impose higher ethical standards on Jews because of the Holocaust. “The writer Leon de Winter once said to me: ‘They present the Shoah as an educational institute for Jews to teach Jewish morals. In other words, the Nazis held courses in the concentration camps in order to imbue Jews with humanity,’” added Gerstenfeld.

Tuesday, 18 October 2011

We checked the Website of the Palestinian Mission in France and the same logo features there. France upgraded its diplomatic relations with the Palestinians in a move meant "to support efforts for creating a Palestinian state and to guarantee its credibility" in 2010. The site if full of anti-Israel propaganda (apartheid, racism, ethnic cleansing accusations). See this map too.

The logo of “the Permanent Observer Mission of Palestine to the United Nations” – on their website and on top of their official statements at the U.N. – shows the Palestinian Authority’s claim to a Palestine that stretches throughout the entire historical entity of the former Palestine mandate.

And the logo:

Absent from the logo is any hint that Palestine consists of anything other than Arab territory. No nod is given even to the U.N.’s 1948 decision to divide the region into Jewish and Arab sectors. As for the shape of Israel by the time it was forced into waging the defensive Six Day war in 1967: irrelevant. The logo illustrates that the Palestinian bid before the U.N. for support of a unilateral declaration of statehood is disingenuous and dangerous.

There is not too much left to the imagination here: Israel is “wiped off the map.”

Source: Norway, Israel and the JewsThe leader of Fellesforbundet (The Norwegian United Federation of Trade Unions), Lars Frøysa wants to boycott the Israeli Histadrut, on the grounds that it is an apartheid organization, according to an article in Vårt Land

This is an organization only for Israeli Jews. In our world this is apartheid. We think that the labour movement has an obligation to protect all workers, says Lars Frøysa. He is leader of the local chapter at Celsa Armeringsstål in Mo i Rana, who has submitted the motion.

He further claims that in spite of the Union’s rejection of the proposal, he is convinced that they will prosper at the ballot, since members are free individuals.

Our old friend Hilde Henriksen Waage, the historian and researcher who on occasion slips into activist mode on Israel related matters, has been consulted (apparently nobody was available at the Histadrut for comments, but that may reflect a certain insensitivity and ignorance on Jewish matters, since probably they were closed for Yom Kippur observation in addition to the weekly days of rest for workers, in Israel on Friday and Saturday):

From its inception in the 1920ies, Histadrut was am important instrument for the Zionist movement in the construciton of the Israeli State. They were mainnly concerned with building their own economy separate from the Palestinian. Their goal was to ensure that Jews got the jobs as well as maintaining high salaries.– How did LO (The Norwegian Confederation of Trade Unions) view them?– Histadrut was an important reason why the Labour party and the LO embraced the Jewish project. They saw the society they wanted to create in Israel as their socialistic paradice. It was almost like a religious conversion, says Henriksen Waage, who underlines that she is not updated on the development in later years for this organization.

If our rabid Unionist, Lars Frøysa, had cared to check the facts and not only let himself be guided by his hatred of Jews in general, Israeli Jews in particular, he might have discovered that Arabs and other ethnic groups have had full right to membership from 1960 and has currently over 200,000 Arab members.

Also inconvenient is the fact that the Histadrut cooperates fully and advocates on behalf of Palestinian workers and activists. But he may not have wanted to notice that, since that would have forced the realization that Israel is not an apartheid state, also when it comes to union matters.

But that neither the VL journalist nor Henriksen Waage should be unable to find relevant information on Histadrut, in terms of historical background and current policies is disappointing, or maybe they could not be bothred to find the info?

The The Norwegian United Federation of Trade Unions has indicated that it wont accept this proposal, but nevertheless has singled Israel out for special treatment on more than 4 separate items. As far as I can tell, there are none for Arab dictators, even now that it is in vogue to want to get rid of them (as long as major Norwegian interests are not jeopardized). Again.

Thursday, 13 October 2011

A survey reveals that 43% of Belgians (French- and Flemish-speakers alike) believe that Nazism "promoted interesting ideas", even though they are deemed to be "essentially objectionable" or "objectionable in part".

44% believe that Nazism should be totally rejected.

Those who believe that there is some legitimacy to Nazi ideology mainly cite nationality motives and the boosting of the economy. When one considers the phenomenal destruction wreaked by the Nazis, one wonders how they are supposed to bring material prosperity!

Most Belgians feel they are well informed about Nazism: 13% are "very well informed" and 56% "fairly well informed".

50% of those aged under 25 are not aware that anti-Semitism was an integral part of Nazism and only 26% that the Aryan race was considered to be superior.

Dagsbladet Information published 26-09-2011 an article on their online news site which claimed Israel was built on lies and myths, the relationship between American Jews and Israeli was built on myths, the Kingdoms of David and Solomon never existed, the Jews of Russia all from the tribe with the king in Khazar who converted, says Jews converted to Islam for pecuniary reasons, says Israel is an ethnocratic state rather than democratic. The author [Maja Naur] has previously been a vocal critic of Israel’s actions, and some claim that she was involved with pro-Gaddafi groups in the 80ies.

Interesting parts highlighted.

Last week the Palestinian president Abbas asked the UN General Assembly to vote for the establishment of a Palestinian state. Israel fights the idea with tooth and nail, and USA’s president Obama find himself in a mess, as he needs the Jewish votes for the primary elections next year.

The amount of Jews in USA is almost the same as in Israel. But the bonds between the Israeli and the American Jews are based on myths rather than facts.

This revealed the Israeli historian Shlomo Sand from Tel Aviv University in his book The Invention of the Jewish People from 2008.

The Book was met with equal amounts of ‘we knew that already’ and ‘it is all a lie’.

The first-mentioned reaction was based on the argument, that it is not unique for Israel to create ideological myths, that confirms the self-perceptions of the country – those kinds of myths are build in every state.

The other reaction, was on the other hand based on a denial of any talk about the Zionist colonization was anything else than the Jews returning to their native country.

Sand’s strength is that his detailed documentation builds on a long number of interdisciplinary examinations from historical sources. Together the myths form an unpleasant pattern, that is used politically against the Palestinians, and can be a part of the undermining legitimacy of the State of Israel. It is in the long run impossible to rely on a right by denying others the same right.

The people that doesn’t exist

But first: Sand’s historical analysis. The conclusion is, that there is no other state in the world that consists of one people. People have always been moving, and with time they are more like they non-religious neighbors than their coreligionists, who live other places in the world. Chinese, Ethiopian and Argentinian Jews look more like their non-Jewish neighbors than Jews that live other places in the world.

The Zionist colonization could not in meantime have existed without an ideological preparation, that fertilized the number of myths of the Jewish peoplehood. The Jewish statehood founding simply needed an illusion of an authentic indigenous people that as ‘Israel’s children’ came ‘out of Egypt’. Because only this myth about Hebrew ancestors could justify the right to Palestine. This made the Zionist historians to emphasize their mutual ethnic origin. The Jews was seen as one biological people.

Here is the tale of the Palestinina refugees who came to Norway thinking they would be well taken care of. This is also the story of a Lebanese young woman, born in Lebanon, with Lebanese passport, who, for political reasons, chooses to define herself as a Palestinian?
Am I the only person who thinks both of these stories show the utter falseness of Norwegians and others with a chip on their shoulder? And did the Lumiere brothers come to Palestine of Fatah and Hamas, or did they go to a town where Jews were in majority (according to a Prussian census) although Egyptian Muslims and immigrants from North Africa began to settle the town in order to gain influence?Telling little lies, one little drip at a time, can slowly over time be perceived as truth. Maybe we should show the pictures showing Jewish life and culture in Israel, around the same time as the Lumiere brothers came to visit?

- We want to show another Palestine than the one we know from the media, showing only blood and murder, says Rana Issa (34).She arranges the Palestinian Night Film From the South Festival.- I do not need a movie like Tears of GAza. If I want to see dying Palestinian children, I can see it on the news, Issa says .She is one of several Palestinians organizing the short film program Palestinian Night, where a cultural line is drawn all the way back to around teh time when film was born, when in 1897 the Lumiere brothers came to Palestine to film. One of the Lumiere short films are on the program.- We want to create a cultural awareness of Palestine, for culture is the most important thing we have. We do not have a country, so it is culture that binds us together. And it is through culture that people can see things with different eyes.

Tuesday, 11 October 2011

French journalist with Le Monde, the 'reference' newspaper in France as it likes to be called, Gilles Paris has a blog entitled "War or Peace" wholly devoted to Israel-bashing and, as a by-product, US-bashing.

"Over the past many years, the body of experts serving the US foreign policy establishment “has not given the administration, the president, and Congress the right expertise.” In my book, Future Jihad, I describe how our academic expertise and the national security analysis that is derived from it are compromised. Most of those who give academic advice come from the universities, whose Middle East departments are funded to a large degree by petrodollar regimes with strings attached. Thus, we have generations that have been raised in the classroom with the ideas of apology for jihadism. In sum, this explains why the President and Congress did not have from their experts the right information on either the threat or the democracy forces in the region. The bigger change has to be done not in the Middle East but here in Washington."

Gilles Paris goes on to criticise the support Benjamin Netanyahu received in Congress and the fact that the funds given to the Palestinians have been frozen.

But he doesn't stop there. He also criticises Richard Prasquier, head of the Representative Council of French Jewish Institutions, because he does not like John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt's book. For Gilles Paris there is one "lobby" and that lobby is not the Arab lobby.

Benjamin Barthe is one of the several Israel-bashing journalists at the Monde. Interestingly, Bernard-Henri Lévy sits at the board of directors of Le Monde... and is held to be by French standards a pro-Israel intellectual. Other prominent French Jews are also associated with Le Monde.

The latest Israel-bashing exercise by Barthe did not go unnoticed. Yaron Gamburg, the spokesperson for the Israel embassy in France was outraged and issued a statement:

"Mr Barthe, one of the journalists who interviewed today the number two of the embassy Sammy Ravel, for TV5 Monde [the equivalent of BBC World], claimed that there is no mention of the Palestinian territories on the maps issued by the Israel Tourism Ministry. Frankly, who does he think he is kidding?"

French Jews are particularly docile. The French media are the most hostile to Israel in Europe. There isn't a single French newspaper which is not heavily slanted against Israel. Remember France 2, Charles Enderlin and the al-Durah affair (In France, screwing Israel makes you a hero). Ilan Halimi and Sebastian Sellam, two young French Jewish men were murdered because they were Jews. Dieudonné has many followers and is a regular guest on French TV. Another 'iconic figure' is Pascal Boniface, a French academic and an advisor to the Socialist Party made the Socialist leaders aware of Arithmetics 101: political decisions should be made according to simple accountancy rules, Arab votes outnumber Jewish votes by ten to one in France, explained Boniface. All the main contestants at the 2011 French Socialist Party presidential primary are anti-Israel, with the notable exception of Manuel Valls. The amount of anti-Israel (and even anti-semitic) books published every year in France is simply amazing. In a recent 'incident' Jews were beaten up. And the list could go on and on. At the U.N. France will never side with the United States to defend Israel!

It seems that things are changing and that French Jews are no longer prepared to stand still when French television broadcast by France 2 - yet again - another amazingly anti-Israel programme.
_________________
PARIS (EJP)---A French public tv documentary on the future of the Palestinian territories was denounced by the French Jewish community as "violently anti-Israeli."

"To my knowledge, never a public TV show had attracted such a reaction," said Richard Prasquier, president of CRIF, the umbrella group of French Jewish organizations.

"Those who love Israel, whether Jewish or not, felt insulted and humiliated", he wrote in a letter to the president of France televisions, Remy Pflimlin.

The documentary, "Is a Palestinian state still possible?", was aired on France 2 television on October 3 in the magazine "An eye on the planet”.

"The program has strongly shocked the Jewish community and provoked a disgusted amazement", Prasquier said. The journalist, he added, acted more like an "activist."

"Especially in a public tv channel, the search for objectivity must be an absolute requirement."

As a result of this protest, France Televisions has announced that its president will meet Israel’s ambassador to France, Yossi Gal, and with CRIF.

On Facebook, a group calling to "Boycott France Televisions" was created. It urged the channel to issue an apology.

Sunday, 2 October 2011

Arte, a French-German TV channel, held a debate on 29 Setember on illegal human organ trafficking.

When asked if they were aware of organ trafficking cases in Europe, the French guest replied that she estimated that there had been 4 ou 5 in France in 2010.

The other guest, German Member of the European Parliament Dr Peter Liese (Christian Democrat) eagerly replied that to his knowledge there had been only one in Germany: "a rich Israeli who had had an organ from a poor Moldavian peasant".

Belgian Prime Minister Yves Leterme (2008)

"We must be wakeful for a new anti-Semitism, sometimes too easy trivialized. We must be wakeful for a new anti-Zionism that is a hidden anti-Semitism that in reality has not accepted the existence of the state of Israel, even sixty years after its foundation. Europe cannot turn its back on Israel. For Israel is linked to the history of Europe, for more than one reason. We cannot speak about the foundation of the Jewish State without mentioning the Holocaust. There is more, the dream of a new Eretz Yisrael was born in Europe, in the hearts and minds of Theodor Herzl and his followers in the 19th century. And since many centuries, in many thousands of European Jewish households, Pesach, the Jewish feast of Easter, ends with the wish: "Next year in Jerusalem!""..........................................

Charles-Joseph, Prince de Ligne (1801)

"It seems to me that this 1800-year-old anger has lasted long enough."